Arthur Edeson - Writer

Cinematographer.
Nationality:
American.
Born:
New York City, 24 October 1891.
Education:
Attended College of the City of New York.
Military Service:
United States Army, 1918.
Career:
Negative retoucher and platinum printer for New York portrait
photographers; 1911—extra at Eclair Studios, Fort Lee, New Jersey;
also studio still photographer; 1914—first film as cinematographer,
A Gentleman from Mississippi
; 1919—co-founder, American Society of Cinematographers (president,
1949–50); 1950—retired.
Died:
In 1970.

The Impatient Maiden
(Whale);
Strangers of the Evening
(Humberstone);
Fast Companions
(
Information Kid
)
(Neuman);
The Last Mile
(Bischoff);
Those We Love
(Florey);
The Old Dark House
(Whale);
Flesh
(Ford)

1933

The Constant Woman
(Schertzinger);
A Study in Scarlet
(Marin);
The Life of Jimmy Dolan
(
The Kid's Last Fight
) (Mayo);
The Big Brain
(
Enemies of Society
) (Archainbaud);
The Invisible Man
(Whale);
His Double Life
(Hopkins and W. De Mille)

Arthur Edeson's style is a perfect example of the approach and
merger of two schools and aesthetics of world cinema. Like Hal Mohr,
Arthur Miller, or Charles Rosher, Edeson was one of the master craftsmen
of the old American school, whose principal work was on the side of
realism, considered by most historians to represent the zenith of
Hollywood photography. Edeson built on the influence of German
Expressionism, brought to America by German cinematographers during the
1920s.

Notable among Edeson's 1920s work are his films for Douglas
Fairbanks, especially three which gained Gold Medal Awards (the immediate
predecessor of the Oscar): Fred Niblo's
The Three Musketeers
, Allan Dwan's
Robin Hood
, and Raoul Walsh's
The Thief of Bagdad
. One of Edeson's great strengths was his ability to capture the
spirit of large-scale scenarios: for
Robin Hood
, for instance, with a scenario by Wilfred Buckland, through the use of
double exposures and glass shots, and, notably for the scenes in the
castle's interior, through the use of natural light. In
The Thief of Bagdad
his photography creates an atmosphere almost unreal, matching the William
Cameron Menzies scenario, and bringing a fascination to Walsh's
film.

In fact, in the late 1920s and early 1930s Walsh was the director to whose
work Edeson was most linked. The realism of the photography of
Me, Gangster
and
In Old Arizona
(the first sound film to be shot outside a studio) prepares for that of
The Big Trail
, the culminating collaboration of the two men. Filmed in the first
wide-screen process (70 mm), known as Grandeur, this epic reveals
Edeson's mastery of composition, using frame enlargement
dramatically.
The Big Trail
is both pictorial and documentary, with a spectacular use of space,
sensitive to the archetypical sequences of the western, including a
buffalo charge, an Indian attack, and a fantastic river crossing.

The visual drama of
The Big Trail
, based in part on epic realism, is counterpointed admirably in his work
as cinematographer for James Whale. (His work for Whale is anticipated by
his collaboration with Karl Freund, one of the great German photographers,
on
All Quiet on the Western Front
, filmed with a mute camera and with sound added later, and one of the
most widely praised American war films.) In
Frankenstein
, his first film with Whale, Edeson was seen to have assimilated and
controlled the "expressionist heritage," synthesizing it
into an appropriate style—attaining a fantastic and mysterious
realism without losing the mobility of the camera.
Frankenstein
is a classic "horror movie," above all owing to its visual
conception which suggests the silent German film, especially
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
, due to its paradigmatic opening scene in which Frankenstein and his
assistant watch a funeral, and to Edeson's camera angles and camera
movement.
The Old Dark House
and
The Invisible Man
are also classics of their genres. In the first of these, the
potentialities of illumination to create zones of shadows give the film an
irony approaching black comedy; in the second, there is a masterful
combination of Edeson's photography and John Fulton's
special effects.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s Edeson worked for Warner Brothers within
the parameters of the studio style, but utilizing his
own below-eye-level shots and strong angular compositions Edeson was able
to produce the sinister and threatening
Maltese Falcon
and the devastatingly romantic
Casablanca
. This alone is enough for Edeson to merit a place of honor in American
film. Without obsessively darkening the set, without a geometrical
lighting leading to remote shadows, obscuring rather than suggesting,
The Maltese Falcon
can be said to have invented a genre—the
film noir
—and to have highlighted a visage that Louise Brooks called
"the face of St. Bogart."

—M. S. Fonseca

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